Here is a photo of John and Perk, John Doak Calvert and Agnes Shrum at their home in Saverton, Ralls County, Missouri. Though undated, I believe the photo of my paternal great-grandparents is from the late 1920s. Agnes came from the Shrum family who were the subject of the June, 2008 post. She married John when she was 17 and he past 50. He was a widower with children nearly grown and owned the farm next door to the Shrum farm.
John was born in Belfast in 1838. Ten years later, at the height of the Irish famine, he left with his family and arrived in New York on the Nelson Village in 1848. His mother Martha gave birth to baby Mary at sea. In the census her birthplace is always listed as "born at sea" or "on the seas." An odd thing about John is that in every census he changed the birthplace of his parents. Sometimes he said Ireland, sometimes England and sometimes he said Martha was born in Scotland. The family were Scots-Irish Presbyterians from Northern Ireland. The Calverts went to Erie, Pennsylvania, settled on a farm that I think was rented. John's father Thomas went to work in a foundry and farmed. Five to seven years later the family headed for Wisconsin. The 1850 census finds them in Pennsylvania but they probably left for Wisconsin in the mid-50s. The family expanded from four children who arrived in 1848 to around a dozen by the 1860 census. John was gone from home by then. He headed south down the river working as a farm laborer. John Calvert married Mary Emma Gillam in Illinois on February 17, 1862. Ten days later he joined the 10th Illinois Cavalry, Company L in the Civil War. He was with the regiment until June of 1863. John Calvert saw action from the river (by which I always mean the Mississippi), to southwest Missouri and then east to Little Rock. He did not re-up with the company when they went to police New Orleans after Lincoln's assassination, but he was in the Illinois regiment at a time when they were sorely under- supplied. He likely had only a bayonet, but a pistol if he was lucky. The 10th Illinois Cavalry lost 290 men during its time fighting to preserve the Union; 262 of them died of disease.
After the war John lived with Emma until her death in 1886. They farmed in Illinois and later in Saverton. He married young Agnes in 1887.
John lived to be in his nineties. The photo here may look very "American Gothic," but I like to look at the detail in the photo. The rack for hanging fish or small game, John's coat with the short sleeves, Agnes' apron. I met a distant cousin through my research. She still lives near Saverton. Her mother was married to Agnes' youngest brother. Each year they would go to John and Agnes' farm to pick strawberries and asparagus. The strawberry patch was situated on the banks of the river. A bumper crop of strawberries and asparagus tells me that John or Agnes or both were good gardeners; asparagus and strawberries take years of careful tending to be well established. Their life was likely not an Eden. They, like most family farmers, probably struggled every year to make a go of it. The garden, river and woods kept them fed even in tough times. The farm was sold by one of Vince's brothers, Mark I think, after Agnes died. These Calverts were farming at a time when family farms were seriously starting to dwindle. Though John's family were newcomers to the rural midwest, Agnes was one in a long, long history of Shrum farmers in the Mississippi river valley. Her ancestors began tilling the black river bottom soil in 1799 at Cape Girardeau; before Napoleon got the Louisiana Territory from the Spanish. That is very early for Euro-Americans to be in the river valley or anywhere in the Midwest. It means a lot of strawberries and asparagus, catfish suppers and autumn game. It means many good and bad corn harvests and a long line of family cows, hounds and babies. I know little more of these great grandparents yet, but I can feel them.
